Audio Post Production Studio

Tag Archives: Game Development

Well then, after getting a bit wet around the edges about the upcoming OUYA I’ve finally gotten my hands on one. So, does it live up to expectation or does it fail to tickle that sweet spot.

Well starting with the unboxing of the OUYA everything comes in one really small box, just like the console itself (heh), included are a powersupply and short HDMI cable. So it is quite literally ready to go out of the box.

The console itself is made from plastic and brushed aluminum with a power button and a handful of ports. (HDMI, Ethernet, MicroUSB, USB and Power) It sizes in at about that of a Rubik’s Cube, although I have seen bigger Rubik’s Cubes.

The controller is the now standard layout of dual analogue, dpad, four buttons and two shoulder buttons aside. Replacing the batteries means removing the silver faceplate, but it’s really easy as they are just held in place by magnets. It’s a small thing but I think of it as a sign of thoughtfulness, the batteries included were not some cheap brand but a good pair of Duracell batteries. It’s not as comfortable as a XBox controller but it’s not uncomfortable by any stretch. But that could be the fact I grew up with NES and MasterSystem controllers.

Setup was simple, infact the manual had 4 steps, no diagrams and assumed you were not an idiot. I suppose that’s going to alienate more than two thirds the console player base. (oh burn) But, plugin, pair controller and connect to WiFi, quick login/create account and boom! Done.

The UI isn’t to bad, while it’s a little clunky it makes up for it by the absence of over crowding from extraneous social features. One small problem is that it doesn’t support 16:10 ratio right away by the looks of things, it set itself to a 16:9 (1080p) and then stretched to fill the space. My monitor is 16:10 with a native resolution of 1900×1200. Not a major problem in my eyes, we’ll have to see how it effects games.

I jumped right into the Discover section where all the games are to be found. Right away the clean interface presented me with a collection of games that caught my eye. All these games are free to try. So what’s stopping me? Nothing of course! I dove in and picked a few games. I hit download and qued up a handful.

Within moments the first game was downloaded and I gave it a go. Didn’t matter if I didn’t like it, I just fired up another. Here is a short video of my prating about on ChronoBlade, you can see the OUYA just to the bottom right of the monitor.

In closing…

I like the OUYA, it cost me £100 from a high street retailer (I was surprised they stocked it to be honest) you get what you pay for in this respect. Any problems with UI and OS will be ironed out in time as long as the hardware holds up, and it should. As the first of it’s kind I can see things being a bit shaky, bigger developers taking time to adopt it, although the likes of Square Enix and Tripwire Interactive have already released titles on it. But I can see subsequent generations getting better and better. All in all the OUYA has gotten my stamp of approval.

Well I bought the OUYA because I hope to develop on the platform, I’ve already got the development kit and am going to look at giving it ago. I’ll let you know how that goes. This is Whisky signing off.

So it has been a little time since my last post, a few things going on but nothing website worthy. Well as you may have seen in previous posts an experiment or two with Flash here is another, shall we say, beta version of a game. Click the image below to open up a new window.

I hope you enjoy this little bit of the game. I think I will get around to expanding and making more levels and improving the overall quality. If you are an artist and would like to get involved then get in touch. ^^

Also I didn’t have time to implement it, here is some music to play while the game is running. A little something by Jason Harding.